DOES CURIOSITY REALLY KILLS THE CAT?

What happens when you enter a pitch dark room that you have never went in before? You take every step vigilantly and the rest of your senses become more sensitive. Right! Now think if you enter that room with someone behind you to prompt you the details of the room. You would walk (act) confident and still bang your feet on furniture already intimidated about. Isn't it?

I think this is how we are raising our children. We are prompting them the details of life from behind, thinking that this might help them maneuver through smoothly. We just forget that the steps we trod would measure differently than what they will take, even if we tell them the exact numbers and direction.

Still pretty clueless of what I am talking about!

At the age of two, my son cannot tell name any color, nor can he say A for apple and B for ball. But day before yesterday when I asked him to try eating his rice with a smaller spoon, he asked me whether the spoon he was eating with was too big? Boom. He knew small and big are opposites. I did not teach him that. He does not even know what opposite means but he understood the concept. How? When we joined the mother-toddler class with the aim to get him to befriend same aged kids, I saw mothers teaching their children names of colors and alphabets, like literally explaining them everything present around. For a few days I thought I lagged behind as I was teaching A absolutely nothing. But then one day while playing with his bag full of cars, he sorted them in a row, headlights facing towards him. He can make out front and rear side of cars!! Even race cars!! (heck! He knows aerodynamics 😂) and categorized them material wise, all plastic ones together, metal ones together and he even distinguished hotwheels from the fake ones which looked exactly same to me. My jaw literally dropped watching that. His tiny brain functions at a mighty pace.
I wondered, if I would have been a little more responsible and "imparting knowledge" kind of mother, I might have ruined his brains ability.

A human mind functions tremendously when it's not overloaded with facts. Observation, curiosity and experimentation are the most important ingredients to ignite a human brain. And we as parents try to kill each one of these very attributes we so want our children to grow up with, by trying to make them catch up with their peers.

Observations - when you don't tell them this is pink and that is blue, they might call pink as blue and blue as pink, initially but they will without knowing put all pinks together and all blues together. And eventually would observe what words people around use to describe the objects and use them. But when you fill them in with facts even before they can differentiate between the things ( in this case, colors), the next time they come across those things, either they won't bring out what they have to share about the things or would just repeat what you taught them so that they can make you feel proud (seriously but it's their primary objective at this age) .

Curiosity - kids would not know that they should turn around and squat to sit on a chair, that the teeth of a comb and not the back are to be put in the hair for detangling or the correct grammar to make sentences but they give it a shot anyways. They don't even bother if they are laughed at, mostly they even take it proudly. But we as parents cannot see our kids make fool of themselves and teach them everything and instruct them a hundred times before letting them have a go at it themselves. We are kill their curiosity about new things. And before we know it, they start turning for help for absolutely everything they come across. And we love this dependency for a few years and hate it there after. But who is to blame?

Experimentation - killing the first two attributes is just enough for them to end this one themselves. And then we keep wondering why didn't our child turn out creative or may be it was never in our blood to be different. Bullshit.
In our race to mold our kids best, we kill their ability to mold themselves.

According to Patanjali in yogasutra 1.7, there are three ways for the acquisition of knowledge. First way is called Agama in which the knowledge or information is received from someone or somewhere you trust, your parents, your teachers or your school. Second way is called Anumana in which the knowledge comes from your logical self. And the third and most profound way is called Pratyaksha, in which the knowledge is acquired by personal experience.

But in our own quest of experimenting, we cannot keep our hands off our kids. I am not saying that we should produce them and leave them to their fate, just like that. But we need to sit back, take time and reflect on our ways of perceiving the growth. It's not like if they can't say A B C by the age of two or finish their degree by the age of twenty, they will end up on streets. Or if they don't dress a particular way or talk a specific language, they will be looked down upon by their peers. Every human being is born with survival instincts and ability to adapt to the surrounding, that should not be the cause of our worries. But what we should be taking care of is the nourishment of these bubbling personalities.

We should work on finding ways to help them believe in themselves, appreciate their bodies, their abilities, acknowledge their shortcomings, their weaknesses and develop enough strength to face them and work on them. After a lot of time invested in understanding and learning something new, everyone turns out for assistance. We should wait out until that point and make sure to help them when they seek us out. We are here to assist them through their way and not to carve out a way for them.

And by the way, a little healthy amount of curiosity keeps the cat alive. 😜